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Are You Prepared for Coaching Success?

Two demanding forces may be holding real estate professionals back by creating gaps that need attention:

If you invest most of each day concentrating on what your clients want, need, and aim to achieve, you can shortchange yourself by overlooking these same gaps in your own life—professionally and personally.

Technology enables you to pack more and more into a day, but this does not automatically make you more productive or successful. Professionals now rely on mobile computing, client management systems, and other business tools, most of them offered through their constant companion—the smart phone. This technology does not always or automatically produce the desired charge to productivity and thinking.

Interaction—the correct human interaction—can be a phenomenal accelerator to overcome the above two challenges. In this column, we're explored many ways that professional communication is a "brain-to-brain dynamic" that can clarify thinking, enrich engagement, and enhance productivity. With coaching, your brain is in for a leap forward that it may not achieve alone. The coaching brain belongs to an experienced and highly-trained professional communicator—a coach (not to be confused with traditional sales trainers).

Growing numbers of professionals in many industries rely on support and motivation from a personal or business coach to bridge gaps, drive improvement, and achieve goals which include business growth. Many real estate professionals who employ a coach reportedly credit this working relationship with generating significant return on investment. Common benefits cited are holding real estate clients accountable and training them to use new business strategies.

That's where the right coach comes in.

Today's professional coaches are intent on advancing their profession and the skills they bring to client engagements, as coaching sessions are called. Coaching industry events like the World Business and Executive Coaches Summit (WBECS), which provides high-quality educational programming for its more than 20,000 attendees, is the largest online coaching event and community. Local chapters of coaching organizations are a good place to begin your search for the right coaching match.

Are You Prepared For A Successful Coaching Experience?

If you hire a coach or are considering this step, you know that the right match will help you charge ahead. One of the most overlooked aspects of hiring a coach is first deciding what you will contribute to ensure a successful coaching experience.

Coaches are trained to help their clients overcome obstacles and roadblocks. However, clients can save themselves a lot of wasted time by committing to overcome three bad habits that do neither the coach or themselves any good:

1. Not doing the learning exercises or "homework"

Experiential learning, or completing seemingly-simple exercises to reveal the complexity behind ending negative behavior and embracing positive reactions, is essential to coaching. Talking is not enough. Coaches help clients find practical ways to incorporate these exercises into a packed schedule, but ultimately progress is ruled by client intent.

2. Not listening to and absorbing the importance of coaching questions

This shortcoming arises from the misconception that the coach is responsible for making the difference. In fact, the coach is trained to help the client—that's you—take responsibility for making the difference. Coaches hone questions to address specific client needs, gaps in understanding, and goals. Thinking about what each question evokes is as important as honestly answering it.

3. Not valuing what the coach does because you do not understand the significance of each thing the coach does to help you

During a recent WBECS webinar, Dr. Brian Underhill of Coach Source reviewed methods for client measurement of the effectiveness of coaching sessions. His research revealed that executive and CEO clients often subjectively undervalued coaches in clear contrast to measured return-on-investment coaching results. Underhill attributed this difference to executive coaching clients not completely understanding the coach's skills and impact because coaching finesse is not specifically pointed out to clients by coaches. Much the way, buyers and sellers undervalue real estate and related professionals, coaches can receive similarly lower evaluations from clients unless professional contributions are transparent. Make the effort to understand why your coach asks you specific questions, selects details to share, and provides specific exercises, and you'll enhance resulting benefits and outcomes many fold.

In a different WBECS webinar, Senior Executive Coach Mark C. Thompson, quoting another well-known coach, explained that there is "deep frustration in getting our clients to really embrace what we have to offer." To illustrate coach frustration, he repeated familiar laments "Why won't they listen to us and our questions?" and "Why won't they pay attention in a way that could really benefit them?" (Any of this sound familiar?)

Thompson's WBECS webinar dealt with "Super Powers of Highest-Paid Coaches." He explained that this title referred to the reactions of executive- coaching clients from The Incredibles-creator Pixar. They described the best coaches as "quick to serve, fast to adapt, drivers of change... like superheros."

Thompson, known for his actionable, practical coaching on business essentials from leadership to sales growth, dissected one super power he called FUEL, as in "FUEL the power to deliver results," to demonstrate how subtle and effective coaching communication techniques can be. Here's a summary of his FUEL acronym points, which, with respect and in the spirit of our shared economy, I have extrapolated so real estate professionals can relate this to improving communication with and serve to their clients:

FOCUS — Focus on what matters most to clients. Focus on a few things with the highest impact instead of trying to do it all at once.

URGENCY & CARING — Urgency about the client's priorities is essential. The context that dictates client priorities is the one that coaches must respond to first.

ENGAGEMENT — Helping the client engage in terms of managing "up and down" with those who matter to the client. That is, assist the client to relate to all who are involved in creating the desired outcomes since success is never about just one person.

LENGTH (of time) — Think longer term from the first moment to create sustainable context for the client-coach relationship. Act as if the client relationship could last for years, not just the length of the transaction. Why not start with a relationship that is built to last from the beginning?

Real estate and related professionals are not coaches, but they rely heavily on communication expertise to deliver their services to buyers and sellers. Your coach relies on communication to serve you—their client. With awareness of the power of skilled brain-to-brain expertise, real estate professionals may have an excellent edge as coaching clients.

Futurist and Achievement Strategist PJ WADE is “The Catalyst”—intent on Challenging The Best to Become Even Better. A dynamic speaker and author of 8 books and more than 1800 published articles, PJ concentrates on the knowledge, insight, communication prowess, and special decision-making skills essential for professionals and their clients who are determined to thrive in the 21st-Century vortex of change.

PJ: “What's Your Point? — the pivotal 21st-Century business question—must be answered before you open your mouth, hit a key, or tap anything. Too often 'Your Point' is not clear to you, and communication remains an expensive illusion.”

As The Catalyst, PJ concentrates on enhancing communication ROI for experienced advisors, executives, entrepreneurs, business owners, and other savvy professionals, who may not have received as much formal training in communication as they have in their own field.

PJ’s on-point professional development programs and featured presentations start where other business content leaves off. What's Your Point? programs, presentations, and content present the rich combination of practical suggestions, game-changing concepts, and on-point perspectives essential to those rising to the challenge of modern effective business communication—online & off.